Perception, Public Figures and Facial Hair

Well, hi there.

If you’re like me then that phrase, once inviting, now sounds creepy as fuck. And with good reason.

As time has gone by, I still feel as if the strangest thing about the whole Ghomeshi story (even stranger than the teddy bear thing), in all it’s sadness, is his initial move: the Facebook post.

But first we must elucidate the complex reality of public figures.

Public figures aren’t quite people, you see. Of course, at their initial state they are in a format adjacent to personhood, but fame and critical acclaim warps perception, public and personal, into something entirely different. The public figure is often a two-dimensional shell of the actual multi-faceted human being, at once created by the public and probably internalized by the person. Yet all we have is our perception, our own sample of reality, which at large, is far too overwhelming for our limited capabilities to absorb. Perception is our gateway to experience. Even when we become aware of it, it frames our understanding of the world and what we just understood about our personal perceptions newly perceived.

Confusing? Yeah, that’s why I didn’t pursue political philosophy.

Social media permits us to craft our on personal publicity page, in case any one gives a shit. More than ever, we have the capability to sculpt the image of ourselves we want to present to the world. In some cases, people successfully sculpt public perception (that is, through this medium) to the form they desire. In a sense, playing this game is playing the public figure game, because trying to mould perception of the self you present into someone likeable, fascinating and envied is the desired result.

For a while there, it seemed like Ghomeshi was winning this game.

Or at least he thought he was, which is the only possible explanation for that post, full of lies as we now know it was. It seems a shift occurred within Ghomeshi. The public figure replaced the person. A powerful public figure, a wildly successful one, an interviewer praised by none other than Barbara Walters. He believed it to be so powerful that it could either trump the truth in every way or deter any one from speaking out against him. But the public figure is the shell, and the core is a deeply troubled man who, hopefully, has since checked out the definition of “consent” in the dictionary.

Perception is all we have. All we can truly, undoubtedly perceive in this case is the person in himself. So I propose we fully jump into the exercise and judge a book by it’s cover.

They are so thirsty.
-Hamilton Nolan 
Carefully Groomed Stubble is a Mark of Low Moral Character.

The devil in the detail, the widespread truth hidden within a small, perhaps almost unnoticeable, fact. In this case, that fact is facial hair. I stumbled upon this article and found it hilarious and perplexing. It basically argues that stubble represents a lax attitude towards social expectations. It is the byproduct of not caring about upkeep, a symbol of laid-back bad-boyism. Thus, deliberately maintained stubble is an oxymoron, a clear indicator of someone trying to be something they are not :

Stubble is supposed to be a byproduct of an underlying lifestyle that some find attractive. It is a transitory state in the ongoing drama of a man who doesn’t give a fuck about society’s facial hair grooming expectations. Now consider the man who grooms his stubble. He is living a lie. He wants to experience the social benefits of the non-caring attitude that stubble conveys, while actually caring very much. He does not care for authenticity; he cares only for appearance. His image is not grounded in truth. He is a man who cares less for honesty than he does for his own self-dealing. He may appear, in all ways, to be a fine person. But he is not to be trusted.

This article was posted on October 21st 2014, 10 days before the Facebook post. It stuck with me, mainly because I thought this makes so much sense, yet I can’t think of anyone who fits this description, who are these people?  You see, between the treeplanters and hipsters of my social life (beards) and the lawyers and other professionals of my family life (clean-shaven), I couldn’t think of anyone who fit the profile.

The carefully crafted Ghomeshi image.

When the story initially broke, I, like many, googled the shit out of Ghomeshi. From staring at photographs and noticing how leery his eyes were to finding out that there once was a thing called Moxy Fruvous and feeling profoundly embarassed for Canada, I dove head first into the Internet searching for understanding.

And I will never, ever, understand that shirt.

 

Eventually I stumbled upon an exposé from 2012, published in the Toronto Life and the initial description by the author of her subject sent bells off in my brain:

” He is dressed in his usual uniform: a slim-fit V-neck, black blazer, distressed denim and haphazard stubble that is in fact deliberately maintained using the level three setting on his electric beard trimmer.”

HAPHAZARD STUBBLE DELIBERATELY MAINTAINED.

A carefree public image shell masking an entirely different reality.

And what really drove it home for me was the face he finally showed the world a month after the horrifying cat came out of the bag: a clean-shaven face.